The Only Boston Police Officer Punished for Beating Fellow Black Officer Gets an Appeal
/Ken Conley, the former police officer from South Boston who has been fighting to clear his name and stay out of federal prison for nearly seven years, may soon learn his fate, with a ruling expected shortly from Acting U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement. Conley, now 36, was convicted in June 1998 of lying to a grand jury about what he saw during the early morning hours of Jan. 25, 1995 when a black police officer, Michael Cox, was severely beaten by fellow cops who apparently mistook him for one of several fleeing murder suspects. Jurors concluded that Conley, who apprehended one of the fleeing murder suspects, neither witnessed nor participated in the beating, but it agreed with federal prosecutor Theodore Merritt that Conley must have seen Cox at the scene moments before the attack, a charge that Conley denied. In September 1998, Conley was sentenced to 34 months in federal prison. In December 1998, three police officers -- two black and one white -- were found liable by a jury in a federal civil case for Cox's beating and abandonment. Conley was found not liable by that same jury, and yet he remains the only person ever criminally charged in the case. His case has been in the courts system since. In July 2002, the three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals denied Conley's bid for a new trial and ordered him to begin serving his sentence. By then, Conley was being represented by former President Clinton's lawyer, Robert Bennett, who took the case pro-bono at the request of Conley supporters in Washington, D.C. Bennett then sought a review of the case by the full panel of the Appeals Court, which agreed to hear the case. In a brief filed with the full court, Bennett stated that "the prosecution's razor-thin case was wholly circumstantial and depended completely upon the credibility of a few problematic witnesses." In August 2004, Judge William Young overturned Conley's conviction after concluding that Conley had not received a fair trial. Two months later, U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan alerted Young that his office planned to appeal his decision. Prosecutors are now awaiting word from the U.S. solicitor general about whether they can proceed with that appeal. That decision is expected later this week. [more]
Cops Silence Outlasts Statute of Limitations on Police Beating Claim
Police kept up their code of silence long enough to outlast the federal statute of limitations into prosecuting officers who nearly beat a colleague to death during a police chase, authorities said. "We do not feel we have enough evidence to charge anyone with the underlying beating," U.S. Attorney Donald K. Stern said Thursday. "We have hit a blue wall." Officer Michael Cox, a detective dressed in plain clothes, was severely beaten by fellow officers who mistook him for a fleeing suspect on Jan. 25, 1995. Cox was scaling a fence in pursuit of the suspect when he was struck from behind, allegedly by fellow officers. Several officers then allegedly kicked and beat him on the ground. When they realized he was a police officer, Cox said, they fled. In the five years since, no officer has come forward to testify about what he saw. [more]
